


Light Years

by shimotsuki



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-30
Updated: 2008-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimotsuki/pseuds/shimotsuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many ways are there to measure distance, and which of them are real?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light Years

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a drabble challenge; the prompt, 'distance', was provided by **iamweebles**.

Cordelia pushed the curtain aside with one hand. The other hand touched her stomach, experimentally, and she wondered yet again how long it would be before she felt anything growing there.

It wasn't easy to see the stars on Barrayar. When she looked out from the low rambling house at Vorkosigan Surleau, there were _clouds_ in the sky as often as not. Water in the air. She shook her head, half laughing at herself for _living_ in a place with such an alien climate, instead of simply swooping in with her old Survey team to catalogue it.

Here in Vorbarr Sultana, where lights from aircars and government buildings filled the sky every night, the stars could almost never be seen at all.

Not that it mattered, really. There were multiple wormhole jumps—and undoubtedly a court-martial with her (former) name right on it—between Barrayar and Beta Colony, where she had left her mother, her brother, her career, the whole of the life that she had known. So it wasn't as though she would have been able to _see_ her home sun, even if there had been stars tonight.

"Dear Captain. You're still awake?"

She turned away from the window, letting the heavy curtain drop. Aral looked exhausted. His new role in the Imperium weighed terribly heavily on him, and he hadn't even officially assumed it yet. But he smiled for her, and it took her breath away. Just as it always did.

The distance between Beta Colony and Vorbarr Sultana, between the duties of an Astronomical Survey captain and those of the Regent Consort of Barrayar, between being a daughter and being a _mother,_ might as well be infinite.

But Aral's warm arms pulled her close until there was no distance between the two of them at all.


End file.
